TEAMOLOGY 101: The 12 Reasons and Causes Why Many Organisations Don't Have Elite Performance Teams And Have Mediocre or Underperforming Teams Instead.

Now, I do team building including developing and facilitating team building sessions for companies, organisations and teams. One of the questions I often ask participants are;

1. Is your organisation a real organisation?
2. If you say it is a REAL organisation; why do you say so?
3. Are you sure your organisation is a REAL organisation and not a group, a club or a mob?
4. In your organisation, do you operate as real teams or a mixture of lone gunners, groups and mobs?
5. How good are your teams in terms of performance and results?
6. What do you know about teams?
7. What do you know about team work?
8. What do you think about yourself in terms of working within teams?
9. What do you know about yourself in terms of working within teams?
10. On a scale of A-F, How would you rate yourself as a person in terms of teamwork and team playing. A. Mediocre. B. Average C. Good D. Great. E. Outstanding F. Superordinary
11. What do you think are the main drivers of team performance?
12. How many hours of training have you invested in learning and training in teamwork and working within teams?

The answers to these questions are always interesting.

Almost every Chief Executive Officer and head of the department knows to some level that teams are very important in organisations but fewer take creating and leading elite-performing teams seriously. The result is that while leaders and managers talk about performance and teamwork, more than 80 percent of organisations around the world are perennially performing at 20 percent or less below their potential. Worse still, the majority of leaders and managers are not aware of this fact. Some even feel insulted to hear that their companies or organisations could be performing below their potential. They do not understand the difference between poor performance and underperformance.

Poor performance is a hopeless state where an individual, team or organization is performing at its best possible but that best possible is producing bad or meager results.

Underperformance is a state where an individual, team, or organisation is performing at a certain personal maximum level or producing one's best results but those results are below what the individual, team or organisation is capable of producing according to one's potential.

But, in general, leaders and managers often fail to think seriously about managing organisational performance as well as how to get the best performance from their people. Creating, building and managing teams is something that is then pushed to the back banner or relegated to the human resources department and without any serious support including financial support.

Maybe this practice of not paying serious attention to teams arises from the fact that few people bother to delve deep into finding why these things are important and the real impacts of team performance on productivity, financial results, and impacts. Generally, many leaders and managers manage by omission. They assume that if they are producing acceptable results, then they are performing at their best. Many leaders and managers pay attention mainly to what is producing pain; they react to problems. They do not have the philosophy of pushing the envelope, to perform better tomorrow than they did today. This philosophy is also called mastery is based on the three principles of Kaizen, Kaikaku and Kakushin. Tony Robbins, my great performance coach calls it CANI, meaning Constant and Never Ending Improvement.

Many leaders and managers never think about maintaining their own performance and results and that of their teams and organisations at the same level as a huge risk. This is why when they have a sense of "All is well", they do not engage in training, education, development, and performance and results improvement and transformation initiatives, activities and programs. People in most organisations are training only to basic competence levels, and not to elite performance levels. Their training goal is to become good enough, not to excel.

Let me tell you this. From my experience very few organisations do the "team building" properly both the terms of approach and the time they invest in it. Many people I have met designing and facilitating team building sessions show they do not get a good approach; many attend one or two team building sessions over years, many of which are not well structured.

The Twelve Major Causes of Poor or Mediocre Team Performance

There are twelve major reasons why there is poor teamwork and mediocre team performance in many companies and organisations. These reasons or causes actually form a hierarchy or a pyramid. So I am not going to waste my time saying all of them here. I will mention the three causes at the base of the hierarchy.

1. Poor or bad theory of team performance
2. Bad or Poor Leadership
3. Lack of Seriousness About Having High-Performance Teams

A person in a position of leadership who does not take building and leading high performance teams is a poor leader. Let me say it gain;

A person in a position of leadership who does not take building and leading high-performance teams is a poor leader.

Tell yourself this;

If I am in a position of leading a company or organisation and I am not 100% serious about building and leading high-performance teams then I am a poor leader.

No! Tell yourself the following instead. Say it loud! Go and stand in the mirror and tell yourself while you are looking at yourself straight in your eyes;

If I am in a position of leading a company or organisation and I am not 100% serious about building and leading high-performance teams then I am loser!

One more thing;

Many people who talk about teams and team performance miss a lot because they do not use teamology. They do not use science and psychology in their effort to build and lead high performance teams. Instead, they use no theory at all or they use generic knowledge which can improve team performance but it does not take the individuals and the teams to the pinnacle of their performance and their most unbelievable results.

High-Quality Teams

What you need in organisations are high quality teams. Teams of strategic results warriors and performance commandos. The quality of teams depends on the quality of the theory of teams that you use, the quality of leadership and the quality of the individuals that make up the team. Any deficiency in any of these three will invariably lead to poor and mediocre teams.

Now I have given you some hints and some advice? Are you doing to do something for me?

1. Are you going to do me a favour by sharing and help me help more people?
2. Are you going to take some serious action on what I have said it or you see this as an extract from a novel?
3. Are you going to engage so I can help you transform your team performance and results and to build a team of high achieving, peak performing strategic results warriors and performance commandos?
4. Are you going to send me a token of appreciation?

Pursue Your Greatness

Your Metastrategist

Simon Bere

Feedback [email protected]

Whatsapp +263-77-444-74-38

?Simon Bere, 2023